Here we go again – Samsung begins teasing March 14 Unpacked event

About a year ago, the speculation related to the Galaxy S3 was approaching climactic levels. The rumor mill was working in overdrive, fueled by supposed leaked specs, blurry shots, and fake renders. Of course, Samsung was perfectly happy with all the hype. After all, the Korean giant encouraged the speculation by not releasing any hard info ahead of the Galaxy S3’s launch on May 3.

Now, it’s rumor season all over again. And Samsung is, again, doing its best to fuel the hype storm. Ahead of MWC, Samsung mobile boss JK Shin confirmed that the Galaxy S4 would be revealed on March 14 in a New York Unpacked event. Invitations have already been sent (we got ours on Monday) and today Samsung has begun teasing the event.

It’s not much to begin with – just a post on the Samsung Tomorrow blog, showing the paper invitations that some press members received at MWC in Barcelona. The post is titled “Ready 4 the Show? The Next GALAXY Coming Up!”, if you needed any more confirmation that the Galaxy S4 will indeed be called the Galaxy S4. Last year, Samsung tried to keep the name of the S3 under a shroud of mystery. It’s good to see they are not going for the same trick twice.

Samsung also put up the Unpacked2013.com site, which for the moment, is just a mobile registration form for those who received their paper invitations. After you insert the 13-digit code on the invite, you are asked to fill in your personal details, and that’s it.

To promote the S3 (like it needed it), Samsung created the tgeltaayehxnx.com site, an anagram for “thenextgalaxy”. Then, the Korean company published some cryptic videos contrasting galaxies with… sheep. Not the brightest idea, in my view, and I hope they’ve decided to be more mature this year. After all, they just need to let the products talk, and the recent celebrity-endorsed ads suggest that Samsung is past the name-calling phase. Or at least I hope so.

What to expect in the following three weeks? Well, expect a lot more dubious leaks and supposed pics of the Galaxy S4. And from Samsung, look for a few more tantalizing hints about what’s to come. We’ll cover them all. But March 14 can’t come soon enough.